In a chemical warfare environment, aircraft that are on the ground can be contaminated with chemical agents that are lethal to human beings. Aircraft maintenance personnel are easily protected by wearing a chemical protection ensemble that protects their skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts. However, maintenance operations conducted in the aircraft cockpit by personnel wearing contaminated protective clothing will result in contamination of the cockpit. When the cockpit is contaminated, the pilot must wear the requisite chemical protection ensemble, which in a small cockpit proves cumbersome.
The cockpit is easily contaminated even though the aircraft has been decontaminated. This is because during the decontamination of the aircraft, the chemical agents are washed to the ground. Maintenance personnel then walk through this area, picking up the chemical agents on their suits. Contact of the contaminated suits with the aircraft recontaminates the aircraft.
A prior art approach to this problem involves a folding shelter. After the aircraft has been separately decontaminated, the shelter is assembled over the cockpit to permit the pilot to ingress and egress the cockpit. An area is provided inside of the shelter for the pilot to don his chemical protection ensemble before exiting the shelter.
This type of shelter suffers from many disadvantages. First, the shelter has no decontamination area to decontaminate personnel entering the shelter from the outside. Nor is there an integral decontamination area for decontaminating the aircraft. Thus, the shelter and ultimately the cockpit will become contaminated.
Second, the speed at which the aircraft can be serviced and returned to combat is slowed by the pilot and the ground crew having to exit the shelter to rest, eat, wash, and plan his next mission. Typically, the pilot, and the ground crew, would have to drive miles away from the aircraft to reach a facility for resting, eating, etc. The pilot must don his protective clothing before exiting the shelter, drive to the safe facility, and then decontaminate before entering the facility. Likewise, when returning to the aircraft, he must don his protective clothing, drive to the aircraft and somehow decontaminate before entering the cockpit (although the shelter has no decontamination area).
A third disadvantage of the prior art shelter is that the shelter is totally dependent on other facilities for electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic power, for decontamination preparation, and for lighting and maintenance support. As such it requires external support equipment, complicating the deployment of the shelter to remote locations.